Whiskey Lullaby
by Moonstar243
Summary: One-shot song-fic. Warnings for character death(s) and suicide. Based off the song Whiskey Lullaby by Brad Paisley and Allison Krauss, hence the title. Based heavily off of Clint/Natasha with minor mentions of the other Avengers.


**AN: Hello, everybody, and welcome to this little one-shot. It's a song-fic, based off the song 'Whiskey Lullaby' by Brad Paisley and Allison Krauss. Give it a listen while reading if you want. This is co-written by myself and Dogstar-Black. The lyrics of the song are italicized and bolded. **

**Warnings for suicide.**

**I don't own the song, or the Avengers.**

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_**~She put him out, like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette~**_

Clint had expected that night to go perfectly. He would propose to the most beautiful woman on earth, she would say yes, and they would kiss each other breathless.

Frankly, that's what everyone else thought too. That's why they were surprised when the redhead took one look at Clint on one knee, told him 'no' and promptly walked away. They never saw her again, leaving behind a heart broken archer.

_**~She broke his heart, he spent his whole life tryin' to forget~**_

The Black Widow stayed at SHIELD, quitting her role as an Avenger. She went on solo mission after solo mission, rarely on base longer than a couple days. She thought it would make it easier on Clint if he never saw her, but she was wrong. He felt her everywhere. In the tower, the gym, on base, even sometimes beside him in bed at night.

The team had lost hope on ever seeing a smile on his face.

_**~We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time~**_

A month later he was no better, if not worse.

He rarely ventured out of his room, only ever doing so to get some food or booze. Tony and Bruce tried coaxing him out with a new bow and some new arrow tips but it was of no use; the happy, prank-playing archer they once knew was gone. In his place was a drunk, heartbroken Clint, who had nothing left to live for.

_**~But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind, until the night~**_

He was finally able to forget. He no longer felt her, saw her, smelled her. He sat in the middle of his alcohol and vomit smelling bed with a bottle in one hand, a pistol in the other.

_**~He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger, and finally drank away her memory-  
Life is short but this time it was bigger-  
Than strength he had to get up off his knees,~**_

JARVIS quickly informed the others, but by the time they broke down his door it was too late. Pepper broke into hysterics when they found him lying face down into his pillow. Tony was quick to pull her away to comfort her as she cried into his chest. Bruce gingerly pulled a piece of paper free from where it had been clutched in the dead archer's hand and read it. He silently handed it to Steve and walked out.

_**~We found him with face down in the pillow with a note that said:**_  
_** 'I'll love her till I die.' ~**_

Only a few people showed up at the funeral. It really only consisted of Fury, Hill, the other Avengers, and some SHIELD agents. What shocked everyone though is that _She_ showed up. Some sent her cold glares, others ignored her as if she wasn't there. They buried him beneath a tall willow tree in a small cemetery somewhere outside New York. Inside his coffin along with him was his bow and a couple of arrows. Carved on top of the wood of his coffin was a hawk with an arrow grasped firmly in its talons.

_**~And when we buried him beneath a willow-**_  
_**The angels sang a whiskey lullaby~**_

Natasha saw the looks but she didn't care to give them a bit of attention. She was already using far too much of her brain power to keep herself from breaking down entirely. She knew this was her fault. She knew the only reason the rich mahogany casket in front of her held the body of the one man she had ever even considered trusting fully and completely was because of her. The only reason that the strongest, most stubborn man she had ever met had put a bullet in his own brain, was because she had been too foolish, too caught up in her own skewed, pessimistic views on love to realize what she was throwing away.

"Happy now, Romanoff?" Stark's voice was scathing, trying and failing to cover the thickness to his voice that told how shaken and potentially even devastated he was.

Natasha felt the shake build in her shoulders, but she simply continued to stare straight ahead, watching with a seeming emotionless detachment as the casket was lowered into the grave. It was under a tree. He would like that.

"Tony." Steve spoke up, voice low with his own emotion, and that nearly caused the red-headed assassin's façade to slip. Because in the years she had known Steve, she had never heard that kind of sorrowful denial that laced his voice now. "Let it go. Not here."

"No, I think here is perfect Rogers." the billionaire protested, voice growing louder and drawing the attention of the other Avengers and a few of the other mourners. "She came to his funeral, after she all but killed him herself."

Natasha continued to ignore him but heard her breathing become slightly more ragged as Stark's attention returned to her.

"He would have done _anything_ for you." the billionaire hissed, coming up into her personal space in a move that would have led her to send him to the ground in any other situation. "He loved you more than life itself, _obviously_. All he wanted to do was be happy with you, and you threw him away."

Bruce came forward next, speaking quietly into the grieving billionaire's ear and lightly pulling him away, so they could pay their respects and leave. She didn't miss the heated, jaded glare she received before the doctor had walked away.

She waited, still and silent as a statue, until she was the only one left. Then, slowly and somewhat hesitantly she edged forward towards the still open grave and crouched down beside it. She allowed her hand to tremble as it reached down and lightly brushed over the hawk and arrow emblem before she drew her hand back sharply, turned on her heel and walked away.

_**~The rumors flew. But nobody knew how much she blamed herself; for years and years-**_  
_**She tried to hide the whiskey on her breath,~**_

For a while, Natasha was content to pretend nothing had happened. That life could go on; that he hadn't mattered to her nearly as much as he had. She noticed it before anyone else, naturally.

Her work became sloppy. What would at one point have been mission that barely tried her skills started to leave her with concussions, broken bones, and bullet wounds. She heard the other SHIELD agents talking – it wasn't as if she was going deaf – saying she had lost her edge; that she was dangerous; that she was reckless, bordering on suicidal.

She'd simply walk past without a glance back to them, ignore the searching looks Fury sent her any time he was in her vicinity, and return to her bunk room to indulge in the bottle of whiskey she was sure to keep handy.

She ended up resigning before SHIELD could fire her.

_**~She finally drank her pain away a little at a time-**_  
_**But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind, until the night,~**_

She hadn't thought it possible, but even in her little ocean-side villa in Spain, his memory haunted her even more relentlessly than it had through the halls of any SHIELD base. She drank because she had nothing better to do.

Nothing better to occupy her mind or body than to dwell on the life of her Hawk, cut short because of _her_ insecurities. He had died never knowing that she loved him just as much as he loved her; because she was too much of a coward to admit it.

One night she ended up on the roof of her villa, staring out to where the stars and ocean met, now ever-present bottle of amber liquid only a few inches to the right of her, well within reach. In one hand, she held a sleek black arrow; its head as sharp and deadly as the day it had been aimed at her heart.

_He_ had given it to her, with the promise that he would help her see that she was worth redemption.

In her other hand, she clutched a pistol.

_**~She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger, and finally drank away his memory-  
Life is short but this time it was bigger-**_  
_**Than strength she had to get up off her knees,~**_

She carefully squeezed the arrow head into her palm until she saw blood and watched it flow with an odd form of satisfaction for a few moments before her chest tightened and she loosed a sob – the first one she had given since learning of his death.

_**~They found her with her face down in the pillow-**_  
_**Clinging to his picture for dear life,~**_

It was two days before the pair of agents Fury had sent to check up on her found the body of Natasha Romanoff.

The other Avengers were contacted; arrangements were made. In the end, it was Steve's idea to rest one master assassin with the other.

_**~We laid her next to him beneath the willow-**_  
_**And the angels sang a whiskey lullaby.~**_

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**Thank you for taking the time to read this, and any feedback is greatly appreciated.**


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